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Saturday, July 4, 2015

Home of the Brave

We need to talk. For the last several weeks, in the wake of
the racial terrorism visited on yet another community, there have been
discussions – some more reasoned than others – regarding things that have been
coming up more and more frequently in our society: racial divisions, gun
violence, and the various ways in which we react in the aftermath of the two. I
can’t speak to the first two. I’m not qualified, as I know very little about
the realities of either outside my own opinions, all of which are based on
hearsay. But I can speak very personally to the third.

It’s interesting to me that, every time another of these
awful events occurs, we immediately get so involved in understanding, and
deconstructing, and arguing about the event itself, that very few people bring
up what is, to me, the most horrifying aspect: it’s becoming more frequent.
Perhaps it’s just that we’re more connected and aware, but it’s gotten to the
point where my initial reaction is no longer the more appropriate disgust and
sadness I eventually slide into, but something that verges on annoyance. Every
time I read another headline about a mass shooting, or a hate crime, or any of
the awful things that fill up my Facebook feed every morning, I am, in that
moment, mostly just angry that I have to read about that kind of shit again.

The really torturous part is that everyone else only seems
to want to dig deeper. The hive-mind of the internet wants to know how, and
why, and where, and how many, and what did the family think, and where did this
guy come from, and none of that does anything to address how we keep it from happening again. Sure, there’s lots of politics
thrown around every time about gun control and violence in our culture (more
recently racism in our culture, which is actually a good conversation to have),
but nobody ever asks what it is about our country that makes us keep doing
these horrible things to each other over and over again on a scale no other
civilized group outside a war zone can even approach.

It’s not the guns, Canada has as many or more, per capita.
It’s not the drugs or the racism, England might be worse on both fronts. It’s
not violent movies or video games, because you go to China and that’s basically
their national pastime.

But here’s something interesting. You tell an American
there’s a speed limit, and what’s he going to do? Build a muscle car and drive
it as fast as he can. You ask a redneck to take down a flag because it offends
someone, and it’ll become a part of his personal heritage. We’re a culture that
is defined by our often stand-offish individuality and independence. Show a
Chinese guy a violent movie and then tell him not to kill anyone, I promise
you, he won’t do it. I can’t say the same about the American.

You go anywhere in the world, and ask them to describe an
American and the two words they use are “fat” and “loud.” The third one is
usually “rude” or “violent.” These stereotypes grew out of the values we hold
dearest to our national identity. I’m not saying we haven’t made progress, but
perhaps we would make it faster if we started addressing the way we view
ourselves as a people. Maybe if we started to redefine to ourselves what it
really means to be a citizen of this country, over time, we might be perceived
differently. And then some of this might actually start to change.